bed and sponged his lips
vigorously.

Meanwhile Mary Ann was lying on her bed, dressed, doing her best to keep
her meaningless, half-hysterical sobs from her mistress's keen ear.

II

It was a long time before Mary Ann came so prominently into the centre
of Lancelot's consciousness again. She remained somewhere in the outer
periphery of his thought--nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak--as
a vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely
more important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had
somehow put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had
started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously in all the intervals
left him by his engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he
would look up from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side
surveying him curiously, and then he would start, and remember he had
rung her up, and try to remember what for. And Mary Ann would turn
red, as if the fault was hers.

But the publisher was the one thing that was never out of Lancelot's
mind, though he drove Lancelot himself nearly out of it. He was like
an arrow stuck in the aforesaid bull's-eye, and, the target being
conscious, he rankled sorely. Lancelot discovered that the publisher
kept a "musical adviser," whose advice appeared to consist of the
famous monosyllable, "Don't." The publisher generally published all
the musical adviser's own works, his advice having apparently been
neglected when it was most worth taking; at least so Lancelot thought,
when he had skimmed through a set of Lancers by one of these worthies.

"I shall give up being a musician," he said to himself grimly. "I
shall become a musical adviser."

Once, half by accident, he actually saw a publisher. "My dear sir,"
said the great man, "what is the use of bringing quartets and full
scores to me? You should have taken them to Brahmson; he's the man you
want. You know his address, of course--just down the street."

Lancelot did not like to say that it was Brahmson's clerks that had
recommended him here; so he replied, "But you publish operas,
oratorios, cantatas!"

"Ah yes!--h'm--things that have been played at the big
Festivals--composers of prestige--quite a different thing, sir, quite a
different thing. There's no sale for these things--none at all,
sir--public never heard of you. Now, if you were to write some
songs--nice catchy tunes--high class, you know, with pretty words----"